Autophagy is an important pathway in the body to remove damaged cell organelles and dysfunctional proteins to maintain protein equilibrium and intracellular homeostasis by the lysosomal system. As a degenerative disease of central nervous system, the main feature of Alzheimer's disease is abnormal protein aggregation. However, the role of autophagy in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease is not fully clear yet. The aim of this paper is to take β-amyloid peptide as a starting point to explore the relationship between autophagy and β-amyloid peptide in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease.